Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday February 12, 2009 @02:00PM
from the thanks-court dept.

wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes word that three special masters have decided that MMR vaccines do not cause autism. 'Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link."'

Yes thank them, but they should still be giving the polio vaccine, so don't thank the cdc. One 3rd world country carrier could bring it back to the US and we are once again sitting ducks since none of the current generation are vaccinated.

Polio has been eradicated in the entire Western Hemisphere. I know that there are 3rd world countries outside of the western hemisphere, however the only 3rd world countries that have polio still are outside of the western hemisphere.

Since legal immigrants are required to get polio vaccines if they're from a location that still hasn't eradicated polio, we are left only with illegal immigrants. 50% of undocumented aliens arrived on a legal visa, that means they had their polio vaccination if necessary. So, we're left with some 50% or illegal immigrants all of which had to have arrived without a valid visa. The likelihood of them being outside of the western hemisphere is pretty low.

A good example is Rabies in Japan. The likelihood that an animal will enter the respective country with the respective disease without having the respective vaccine is super low.

Not gonna happen. The anti-vaccine movement has long since stopped being about science (if it ever was) and has become a self-sustaining community of believers. Once a community like that develops around an issue, it's virtually impossible to get rid of it. These people have built an entire support system built around the idea that they are all bound by the fact that their poor kids got autism from the evil vaccines. They do not want to give up that support system, and will rationalize however they need to to keep it.

They will likely claim the court has no right to make medical decisions (already happened in this thread!) or that the court is being manipulated by Big Pharma with its legions of lobbyists. Under no circumstances will they simply admit they were wrong.

You are painting with too broad a brush. All anti-vaccine people do not have autism fears. Some people just don't want the government to dictate the shots that go into their children. The government isn't always right. Be thankful that people are fighting for right to choose what you do with your children.

That said, the fact that science cannot find a cause for the incredibly rapid increase of autism in industrialized nations isn't helping matters. People are looking for a common link and keep coming to a solution that is common to these nations and immunization stands out. It may not be true, but it isn't that irrational.

The initial hypothesis that immunization might be responsible is not irrational. Hanging on to that hypothesis as truth in the face of more and more studies showing no link (and the original positive study that showed a link and started the whole thing being exposed as a fraud) is irrational.

If you don't want to get your kids vaccinated because you're afraid of the government, I think you're wrong, but go for it. Trying to scare other people into agreeing with you using the autism bogey man is just plain wrong.

The problem is that it is not a matter of individual health -- it is a matter of community health. To prevent epidemics, a certain threshold of the population must be vaccinated. By not vaccinating your child you are not just threatening its life, but the communities overall well-being. As the husband of a pediatrician who honestly believes that not vaccinating your child is tantamount to child abuse (perhaps another thing that parents should be able to choose to do to their children?), I think this is exactly the sort of thing the government should dictate.

The last time parents chose about vaccinations was the vast public trial of the polio vaccine.

The government didn't authorize it, and the FDA still didn't even regulate vaccines at that point. Parents simply offered their children up to be experimental guinea pigs because the fear of polio was THAT BAD.

I'd rather not see mumps measles and rubella get so common that parents are willing to risk their children's safety upon unproven technologies, when the vaccines are proven.

Universe knows we need to protect people against bogus medicine... there's a reason why we started regulating drugs, because of patent medicine and swindlers.

There are some choices that are just so simple and basic that the government should be dictating them. Like "hey, the only active ingredient in a drug should not be cocaine."

You are painting with too broad a brush. All anti-vaccine people do not have autism fears. Some people just don't want the government to dictate the shots that go into their children.

And some are against innoculations in general, believing vaccinations are short-sighted, saving people now at the expense of future generations becoming more susceptible to the diseases. As well as starting an arms race with the diseases -- the diseases develop resistance, and you have to change the vaccine. Instead of becoming less lethal and less disabling over time, diseases become angrier.

Most people would save their own children today rather than thousands of people in the far future.I can't blame them, but I find it illogical.

"Be thankful that people are fighting for right to choose what you do with your children."

Not in this case, not getting a child vaccinated hurts everyone. Non vaccinated children may cause mutations in a virus rendering the vaccines useless. This can not happen in a vaccinated child.Communities getting sick is bad for economics, overall health.

"That said, the fact that science cannot find a cause for the incredibly rapid increase of autism in industrialized nations isn't helping matters."

That's incorrect. It is the broadening of the term. In fact, the 'increase' follows the broadening of the term exactly. In fact, when the vaccines where changed in 1998 it had NO impact on the 'autism' rate; which was expected.

"People are looking for a common link and keep coming to a solution that is common to these nations and immunization stands out."

It's no more a common link then drinking water is a common link. It was rational to think this 30+ years ago, not any more.

"It may not be true, but it isn't that irrational."Based on all the evidence, and there is mountains of it, it is irrational to keep thinking vaccines are the cause.

When my daughter was 11 months old, we had a measles outbreak in my neighborhood in San Diego. The outbreak originated with a family who chose not to vaccinate their kids. They went on vacation to Switzerland, where they ran into some other people who chose not to vaccinate, and were exposed to measles. The original kids came back from their vacation and exposed other kids at their charter school, some of who were also not vaccinated by parental choice. Then someone took a sick kid to a doctor's office without realizing their kid had measles and exposed a bunch more kids, some of whom were too young to be vaccinated yet. From there, the outbreak moved to a day care center and a swim school.

Luckily, my daughter was never exposed. She got her MMR shot on schedule and all was fine in our family. However, at least two other infants caught measles. They recovered, but I imagine they and their families had a really bad week or two. Also, the risk of complications up to and including death are higher in younger children. (As an aside, the death rate from measles in developed countries is about 1 in 1000 cases).

If my daughter HAD been exposed and come down with measles, I would have been very, very angry at the parents who chose not to vaccinate their kids. And if they had explained their beliefs by referencing Jenny McCarthy, I might have been tempted to violence. If you want to take medical advice from some starlet instead of a doctor, fine. But when the consequences of that advice impact MY kids, you've crossed the threshold from misguided to negligent, and I honestly think you should have to answer for your actions.

I don't know what's more frightening, your willful ignorance or the fact that someone modded it insightful.

By your logic, airbags don't work because they don't work 100% of the time in all circumstances. Or plants don't grow anywhere at all because they won't grow in battery acid.

As long as a large enough portion of a population is vaccinated against known strains there won't be enough hosts for a new strain to emerge that the vaccine is ineffective against.

Even people who were vaccinated can get it if there immune system has been compromised by something else. If most of the population is vaccinated the chance of being exposed to it while you have a compromised immune system is low. If the population was made up of ignorant fools, there'd be a good chance of coming into contact with it while you have a compromised immune system. Now there's a chance for a strain to develop that can handle the antibodies of someone who has had the vaccine. Then you give it to your kids, they spread it to the school, and so on until it's an epidemic.

Please, for the love of whatever invisible space man you believe in, don't breed. If you have, your invisible space man god told me to tell you to sacrifice them to him. Then they can play in space with the invisible pink unicorns.

Autism occurs and makes itself known about the same time as the vaccination occurs, which may explain why some people makes that connection.

But even if there was a small risk of autism related to the vaccination the risks involved by not being vaccinated are higher and the risk of an epidemic is higher if there is no vaccination performed.

So if it's possible to get a vaccination - get it. People avoiding vaccination are a breeding ground for diseases like polio and a lot of other nasty things. The only disease successfully erased is smallpox - unless it escapes a laboratory somewhere, in which case we may have a disaster on our hands.

Personally I would call parents that are fighting against vaccinations as irresponsible and a danger to society.

So...while I generally believe vaccines are a good thing blindly trusting those who profit on you getting them when they say there is no risk is stupid and dangerous to say the least.

Who said there's no risk? There's always a risk. The GP was trying to point out that the risk of the vaccine is a lot lower than the risk of doing nothing (which a lot of people seem to ignore).

I also don't really with how you've tried to polarize this argument into a series of extremes. Big Bad Pharma who "doesn't create cures" vs. Poor Ignorant Parents who lap up everything Big Pharma says.

You shouldn't really blindly trust anyone. In this case we don't have to. There's huge rafts of evidence on the efficacy of these vaccines, and a long history of people dying of Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Isn't that what we're talking about here, not a vaccination (HPV) just developed practically yesterday?

A good doctor should welcome a parent who has done this research and isn't rejecting immunizations out of hand, but just the traditional schedule of how they are admitted, which many doctors have just taken a schedule from somebody else without doing any work to develop one on their own.

Doctors don't usually come up with their own schedules; unless you're actually an immunologist, it makes far more sense to trust a published schedule, like ACIP or NACI. These are reviewed every year, and cover all the interesting rules and interactions between various agents. Vaccination scheduling is far more complex than you might realize - there are specific rules covering live and non-live agents, which agents can be given at the same time, minimum/maximum intervals between series doses, and more.

Disclaimer: I've worked in the industry, specifically with regard to writing schedulers. I know firsthand how hard it is.

So basically, there's a large body of evidence quantifying the risk. You, your wife, and your doctor chose to ignore the evidence, because you felt bad about it. Congrats for making emotional, rather than logical, decisions.

There's been some research that has shown by certain ages a person's capability to learn an initial language drastically cuts off.

Barney, and the rest of his never-change-facial-expressions-non-human-faced friends, deprive babies of the non-verbal cues normal human interaction produces. If non-verbal language follows verbal language, sticking a baby in front of Barney or Dora or any of those other disturbing computer animated baby shows is feeding the kid a language that doesn't sync with the human world.

Does Barney express pain with facial expressions? You wonder why "autistic" kids can't tell when they are hurting other kids? They don't speak the same language as the rest of humanity.

Of course something like this means that when mommy and daddy let Dora and Barney babysit the kid they were partly responsible for their kid's lack of development, and we can't have that...

>>Actually most outbreaks of previously controlled disease are due to immigration (specifically illegal immigration) but yea lets just assume its the very small % of parents who dont vaccinate an 8 week old baby..

I didn't say that most outbreaks were caused by unvaccinated children. The majority of US children are still vaccinated currently. But that's just another check in the "Reasons to Immunize" column.

>>Why the hell is chicken pox mandatory it makes no earthly sense.

Because chicken pox is preventable and life-threatening to those who did not get it as children and the immuno-suppressed. A better question is "Why the hell should they have to die because you don't like the national vaccination policy?"

>> Medical decisions should be made by parents, period.

No. The fact that we have so many antibiotic resistant diseases explains why this is not true. Parents have already made far too many "medical decisions" to get their kids viral infections treated with antibiotics, thus killing people with the beautiful antibiotic resistant strains of diseases they've helped create. I don't really want your kid to die of a preventable disease just because your a libertarian. Nor do I want your unvaccinated kid to become a petri dish for new super-bugs that will eventually supercede my kids immunity. I see no difference between your belief in your ability to second guess the medical establishment and Christian Scientists treating their children through prayer.

1) Immune suppressed kids can't get vaccines. The fact that you would even suggest this makes me think you don't know enough about vaccines to be making educated choices.2) Vaccines are not medicine. They are generally some form of the disease that triggers an immune response that builds up antibodies without causing full blown symptoms of the disease.3) Vaccines are a special case because they only work effectively if everyone uses them.

The federal government is really quite giving in this case. You don't have to get these vaccines if you don't want them. You just can't go to public schools and risk infecting everyone else. I think vaccines are a really good line to draw. It's something that only has significant value if everyone does it, and it's a ridiculously cheap solution that has hundreds of years of science behind it. If you think about it, almost all of the medical decisions doctors make are based upon significantly less scientific evidence. Vaccines make even drugs like aspirin look ridiculously under tested. It might do you good to research the history of vaccines.

But I'm not going to argue further with you. That is why I draw the Christian Scientist connection. The anti-vaccine crowd do not believe in vaccines. Scientific evidence is beside the point.

I think for some reason a lot of people find joy in finding problems with progress. They seem to want every advancement we make as people to have some dark side effect that will lead us to our doom.There is being vigilant not taking things at face value, then there is going overboard and jumping to conclusions just to prove progress is bad.

Just recently a bill was passed to stop a chemical from being put into children's toys, however there is no evidence that it is actually harmful in that amount. And is being replaced with new chemicals that could be just as bad, if not worse.

Is it that they want to be Hero's saving us from them selfs or do they take joy in preventing progress.

I didn't know about this until just last week, and I'm fifty! But apparently the evidence is pretty good. Search the Web for "paternal age autism" and you'll find a raft of stuff, such as a Washington Post article that says this:

When fathers are in their thirties, children have about 1 1/2 times the risk of developing autism of children of fathers in their teens and twenties. Compared with the offspring of the youngest fathers, children of fathers in their forties have more than five times the risk of developing autism, and children of fathers in their fifties have more than nine times the risk.

This hits home for me since there is actually some possibility I might attempt to father a child or two in the next several years. Food for thought.

FYI, the genetic bases for both of these trends is (at least partially) known. For Down's syndrome, this is caused by non-disjunction of chromosome 21. Since eggs are in a state of suspension in a female (after all having been created at the same time), the longer they are in this suspended state, the higher the chance for a non-disjunction. This also contributes to why miscarriage rates go up (and fertility down) as women age.

For autism, at least one of the contributing factors is de novo copy number variants (segment of the genome that have been deleted or duplicated). As the father gets older, his sperm (which he constantly makes) have undergone more copying, and mutations (errors in that copying) will accrue. Errors such as non-disjunctions, in which a whole chromosome is copied, lead to inviable sperm. However, smaller mutations are viable...but may still be deleterious.

The one disappointing thing here is that the court blames physicians for the public misconception. In reality, the blame lies more with the mass media, who turned the original claims into a massive health scare.

The vast majority of physicians correctly investigated the claims and determined that the evidence did not stand up to scrutiny. But the media took that and turned it into their beloved "lone rebel" story, with a parents' champion fighting to get the truth out while the sinister establishment tried to suppress it. Result? Massive decrease in vaccine uptake, threatening public health and risking a deadly epidemic. All because "your children are at risk" sells more papers than "oops, we goofed up, turns out vaccines are safe after all".

There was no scientific evidence that Silcone Breast implants caused illness [nytimes.com] either, but that didn't stop them from driving Dow Corning into bankruptcy with claims that they did. People do have a right to their beliefs, even if they are paranoid delusions, they have a right to refuse to get their kids immunized. What they don't have is a right to is compensation for harm that occurred after another event with no evidence that the other event actually caused the harm. In this case, the original claim was that the mercury (Thimerisol?) caused autism; it was quickly removed from vaccines, and then the claim was changed to the vaccination itself caused autism. When that couldn't be proved, then the claim was changed to several different vaccines taken closely together cause autism. (This last claim isn't quite as ridiculous as the other claims, since vaccine safety is tested a single vaccine at a time, not in combinations.) Yeah, I'm sorry about your kids' medical problems, but, like silicone implants, there is no statistical evidence that the medical problems occur any more frequently in kids that have had the vaccinations than kids that have not. Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc [wikipedia.org] is still a logical fallacy.

"It is worth noting the standard the court was using allowed for the petitioners (the parents of the children with autism) to demonstrate âoebiologic plausibilityâ as opposed to direct cause and effect. Scientifically, biological plausibility is an easier standard to meet."

So the courts ruled that it is not even plausible that the vaccines caused autism.

Of course one day there might be a theory and some evidence that changes this ruling.

OK, if I'm following this that means:
Media -> Law -> Courts -> Science
So the Media now defines science?... of course now that I think about it, that's probably not to far from the truth for a distressingly large portion of the population.

If there is a judicial proceeding that hinges on a scientific question, what else are you going to do?

This wasn't some stupid "And now, we will have a judge decide some science for us!" thing. A bunch of parties sued, alleging that their children had been harmed by vaccines. The only way that those cases could be decided, is by deciding whether or not the vaccines were indeed responsible. The court doesn't "decide scientific fact", it has scientific expert witnesses and research as evidence in deciding whether or not a particular party is responsible for a particular injury. The same way that a court would use eyewitness testimony or DNA forensic evidence.

Also in the context of this court case, the court did not specifically conclude MMR does not cause autism. The three masters decided that the plaintiffs could not meet a minimum burden of proof that a link existed. The plaintiffs did not have to prove that MMR caused autism; all they had to prove was that there is a plausible link. They failed to do that.

Because our society has certainly decided that scientists can no longer decide scientific facts. If that were not the case, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.

Over the last 10 years, US and UK have spent tens of millions of dollars to provide "negative proof" of something that we had already known, just to quiet down the conspiracy theorists. But instead of quieting them down, this has empowered them, by giving them and their claims legitimacy. Now, we're faced with a situation where childhood vaccination has taken a nosedive, and we're seeing old goodies like measles re-emerge into small (for now) epidemics. And as herd immunity is eroded further, we will see additional diseases make an impressive comeback.

So now that we took the right to make educated judgments about medical and scientific matters, away from doctors and scientists, we've also demonstrated that as a society we're incapable of making rational decisions... which isn't surprising. The only option left seems to be the courts, where reasonably educated judges may or may not rule according to the best data available. Well... at least there's a chance.

And for those who will scream at me about mercury in vaccines, why don't you compare a single or rare exposure to a tiny amount of mercury... to how much mercury you must feed to your children via fish... and corn syrup.

They stopped using thimerosal in the MMR vaccine *years* ago. In fact, that is what makes it so trivially easy to show that mercury from thimerosal in the MMR vaccine was unrelated to autism. They removed it, and nothing changed.

(And by nothing, I mean not even the anti-vaccination rhetoric. It's about as bad as the buffoons who claim that Coke is addictive because they surreptitiously still add cocaine -- undetectable cocaine, even!)

I'm sorry about your child's autism... and the tremendous toll it has taken on your family, but I have to tell you - reading your comment has made me ever so sadder for our society.

Sir, the only place where either the value of vaccinations or any causative relationship between vaccines and autism are still debated, is in the public press and on the Internet. Anti-vaccination has become a subculture, that is so far off the chart of what is scientifically substantiated, that it is now the prime example of how people will eagerly buy into only the biggest lies.

I have over 12 years of experience in immunology and virology... I have 2 degrees in biology and biomedical science... and after very carefully examining the peer-reviewed primary literature in the matter of autism vs. vaccines, I have found zero evidence to show a positive causative relationship... not even a strong, statistically-significant correlation.

With regards to vaccines in general, to claim that their benefits are questionable is to render the last 50 years of research null and void. It's simply wrong.

I know that my post hasn't made life any better for your family, but I do hope that it can at least help to get you back on track. Honestly, we in the medical research community have only your interests at heart. We're not all part of a giant conspiracy, and if we knew something to be harmful, we'd have withdrawn it long ago. Not trusting us, simply because there are websites full of hate and stupidity that tell you so, is quite a bit like hating black people after reading Clan literature. Every bit as insane, and may be even more damaging.

Who else should have the final say in a damage claim? Parents accuse the producer of the vaccine to have done damage to their children by causing their autism with the vaccine. The producer claims to be innocent. That's definitely something for a court to decide.

Where have you been? Courts have always not only made medical decisions, but ones in various other areas of science, too, when there is a dispute. What exactly do you think forensics are, anyway? They do the same things courts have always done - rely on expert witnesses. As soon as you come up with a better way to correctly solve disputes involving factual claims, please do let the world know.

The courts are evaluating methods and conclusions, not doing the actual research. They don't have to have medical degrees or be doctors, just understand enough science to comprehend the scientific method and enough math to follow the statistics.
This follows the same argument that one shouldn't have to be a doctor to take medicines correctly, or have to be a lawyer to follow any given law.

Concerning scientific matters, judges rely on expert testimony. In this particular case, they relied on three experts appointed by the court that there was very little evidence to support a link between MMR vaccines and autism.

The courts are simply (and fortunately) ruling based on the science. The studies are very clear, these vaccines do not cause autism. I feel very sorry for these families, but they (and their lawyers) have been trumpeting pseudoscience in a vain attempt to find a single target to blame.

Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.

The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.

Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:
1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count
2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.

The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.

If only I had mod points...

Having worked in autism research for 5 years, just determining which potential research subjects were "autistic" enough was a challenge. Using all the standard measures (ADI, ADOS, language abilities tests, etc.) wasn't always enough. Clincal judgement plays a huge role.

I wouldn't say that the definition of autism has broadened, but rather autism is now considered a spectrum of disorders. It's more of a catch-all rather than a disorder in and of itself.

In my time in autism research, I also saw that people were pushing hard to get their mildly affected kids officially diagnosed so that they would be able to get special services. The problem here is that the schools would refuse to provide services to kids who didn't get the diagnosis, and then kick the kids out of school when they would be disruptive. So the parents were left with no alternative but seek a doctor that would give them what they wanted.

The problem here is that the schools would refuse to provide services to kids who didn't get the diagnosis, and then kick the kids out of school when they would be disruptive. So the parents were left with no alternative but seek a doctor that would give them what they wanted.

Wait, what is the problem? Either the kids actually have Autism and doctors should have diagnosed them, or parents of disruptive kids without Autism need get their kids to behave. Maybe you worded it wrongly, but it sounds like you are saying the problem is that schools are refusing to provide services to kids who don't need those services. That's not a problem. If the kid isn't Autistic, he shouldn't be treated as if he is. If a kid isn't Autistic and is being disruptive, he should be kicked out and the parents should be told to deal with that, not shop around for a doctor willing to misdiagnose just so the parents can claim that their non-Autistic kid isn't really a bad person.

Or are your really suggesting that the problem is doctors need to do a better job of detecting earlier so that autistic kids can get the services they need? I'm really not sure. Please clarify.

You're misunderstanding. Autism is generally regarded as a spectrum of disorder, from those with mild behavioural difficulties all the way to those who cannot function independently in society. It's not something that can be an 'is or is not' like, e.g. Down's Syndrome.

At the mild end of the spectrum it can be really difficult, and quite subjective, to differentiate mild autism from simple naughty behaviour, and it is often when the child gets a bit older that the diagnosis is much clearer because their level of social functioning becomes much more apparent compared to those around them.

'Braver' doctors will overdiagnose and get the occasional complaint from parents saying "you labelled my child and now they're fine" because they had non-autistic spectrum behaviour problems that they grew out of. More conservative doctors will choose to watch and wait then get occasional complaints that they should have seen something subtle earlier - in fact, they probably did but decided to hold off.

I was diagnosed with asperger's disorder 5 or 6 years ago. On the whole, my life has not been affected in any major way. While I can identify some of the signs quite easily, and I definitely have problems socializing, I would not say this somehow makes me all that far off from your usual nerd. Yes, I'm a shut-in, for the most part, with nothing but the cold glow of my LCD monitor to keep me warm, but, again, I'm posting on/. so no surprise.

Kidding aside, the doctor who diagnosed me said it was obvious to see, but that it is not so much a condition as it is a personality trait. He explained how autism is a spectrum and how severe it can be. I wasn't doomed to a life at the end of the short bus nor was I "gifted" with incredible genius the likes of which man has never seen, despite what the average idiot and mother thinks, respectively.

In most places I go, I can't mention the diagnosis without being mocked and told that I think I'm a "special little snowflake" blaming all of his problems and social defects on a made-up disease. It's really annoying.

I guess I'm just trying to say... it's better to be more conservative with the diagnosis as you showed, and to remind people that it's not necessarily a world-shattering condition in many cases.

if the kid is autistic enough to warrant being kicked out of school for autistim-related disrupions wouldn't that be easy enough for a doctor to detect early on?

No. Autistic children typically behave very differently in a one-on-one environment than they do in a group, between strangers and people they know, and also between an adult and their peers. Their behaviors are also not consistent, they may be fine in school 99% of the time, but then something will set them off that they can't deal with.

I can see what you mean, but it's entirely possible for a child to be disruptive and the issue not be autism. It could be sheer naughtiness (which may be a disorder in its own right, but not autism), it could be secondary to something like chronic pain (undiagnosed constipation is a common one), it could even be some sort of home problem or abuse. None of those things are autistic spectrum, and all of them take time to tease out. Until a child reaches an age at which they acquire complex social interactions (or should), characteristic behaviour is difficult to spot.

Think about it this way: if someone says 'my computer keeps crashing' I would assume (as a Slashdot member) you would know how to go about diagnosing that - you would need to see the complex behaviour of interacting with the operating system in order to work it out. If it was a rack in a server farm and you just had a blinking LED telling you it's not working, that wouldn't be enough.

In the meantime schools can be unsympathetic because they just see a naughty child. The nub of the issue is that actually we everyone, including schools, should be sympathetic to any child with behavioural problems, because whatever the issue, the solution is for parents and other responsible adults to provide a supportive environment, not to chuck the child out.

Actually having an Autistic son, it was quite surprising how little equipped the average doctor was to diagnose him.While when he started preschool the people there immediately knew there was something different about him the doctors kept just sending us to more specialized specialists until we made quite a few trips to childrens hospital with a lot of testing including MRI's and things before he was diagnosed.Also when he started school he was not talking and very frustrated with attempting to communicate. The school principal started out not even believing in autism but after the first year agreed that autism was a real disability.

The autism scare doesn't really have anything to do with how medical professionals and scientists in the United States treat mental disorders. Instead it has to do with how the media does business.

It goes like this: some crackpot with a MD or phD (or sometimes not even that) makes a crackpot claim which nonetheless might appear credible to the layperson. If the crackpot claim plays on the emotions, biases and greed of the public (wanting someone to blame, distrust of big pharmaceutical companies, desire for large cash settlements) and the media, always hungry for a sensational new story, picks it up and relays it to a credulous public, and the movement builds momentum. Occasionally the media will host talking head debates where experts on both sides of the issues duke it on in sound-bite interview-exchanges. The result is that both sides appear equally credible (or whoever has the more charismatic expert appears more credible) and the public goes on thinking the crackpot theory may be/is probably true, in spite of whatever the evidence is, or overwhelming consensus that the crackpot theory is just that.

And I believe the who autism scare was kicked off by a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield, and was picked up and spread by the UK media, so it's not a purely American phenomenon.

I've started to wonder if the reason earlier cultures had some of those bad evil non-pc ideas wasn't to just be mean evil patriarchal societies.

Maybe they figured out that bad things tended to happen if they had too many engineers having kids with other engineers. That it was better keep similar occupation men and women apart so you'd get the mathematically minded engineer procreating with the socially orientated receptionist. Like the shallow/deep roller spiel in Red Dragon (or was it Hannibal?). Shallow/Shallow or Shallow/Deep was okay. Deep/Deep, not so much...

Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.

Well, there are some people in the medical community claiming that fetal diagnostic ultra sounds, whose usage has increased significantly in recent years, may in fact account for increased incidence of autism in children.

The theory is based on thermal effects of ultra sounds. Presumably heating neural tissue in early development phases by even 1 degree is quite bad. This is actually confirmed on mice studies.

However, on the other hand, there are other people in the medical community who do not buy this argument and claim that ultra sounds are 100% safe, and that human fetuses (unlike mice) are well protected by inches of mother's tissue, and larger amount of amniotic fluid, and that ultra sounds are not focused narrowly enough to actually heat the fetus (or embryo).

I guess Google search on the topic could be interesting but inconclusive.

The reason you vaccinate at 2-6 months is that the mothers antibodies provide protection up until then. After about 6 months the childs immune system is essentially on it's own. If it has seen a disease (or vaccine) prior to then they can safetly develope a native immunity to it while still under the umbrella of the mothers immune protection.

Today it is rare for a baby to die. 300 years ago it was assumed that most would die before the age of 5. The primary difference is vaccines. By vaccinating children you protect the child AND you reduce the disease load on the population in general.

I am very pleased that your gamble didn't hurt your children but if enough children are not vaccinated then the rate of these disease will shoot up dramatically, and these are deadly and debilitating diseases.

There's these things you might have noticed on your wife. Likely, to you, they're little pleasure apples of delight. But they also, when the hormones are just right, begin secreting a white, milky fluid, which babies are known to be fond of.

Oh, don't sell yourself short. And anyway you don't need to be an expert, or anywhere near, to have an opinion round these here parts.

but I don't see how the mothers antibodies could be protecting the child after delivery.

Yes, it's preposterous. For one thing, how would those alleged antibodies be transported? Teleportation aside, it would require some substance that passes from the mother to the baby on a regular basis to act as a carrier.

You're causing a serious problem in the community entirely because you're some combination of selfish and stupid. Of course you can get away with not vaccinating for some contagious disease, because you're a free rider on everyone else doing it.

There's some small risk in vaccination (very small, but it exists). You want eveyone else's kids to take the risk so that your kid doesn't have to. That's evil. Plain, simple, selfish, evil. Stop hurting other family's children to protect your own - you benefit from society in so many ways, you need to participate in society where it really matters.

This isn't "do your part, recycle" or some other BS, this is your very real duty to protect all children in society by taking a very slight risk with your own.

Presently there is absolutely no medical evidence to support this. Lots of kids get these vaccines and are OK. The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens.

The only evidence that shows these vaccines may cause autism are the babbling chatter of actors/actresses like Jenny McCarthy, who frequently loves to go on insane rants/shout vests against doctors/scientists - telling them they are wrong and she is right.

The people who mandated them will say "sorry we didn't know," but the parents should be able to say to them "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did to our kids, you miserable social engineers."

And when the kids catch these horrible diseases what then?

The parents will say, "Sorry we didn't know, we thought we knew best." Do the kids then get to say to the parents: "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did us" ?

"This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us. "So instead of "experts" you want people with no real education in the subject, no real facts, and a lot of fear and guess work to decide?We know that vaccines don't cause autism. Just about every kid has been vaccinated and they don't all have it.Vaccines could contribute to it but so could a lot of things. I blame DVDs myself. The huge increase in autism started when DVDs started to replace video tapes.So we should also ban DVDs.

If the government required vaccine makers to shoulder the burden of liability claims, absolutely no drug company would ever bother to manufacture them. They take a very long time to develop, sell for a relatively low price, are generally given to jury-friendly and photogenic children, and are difficult to manufacture.

The powers that be have decided that the public health benefit of vaccines existing far outweighs the risk of the govt. having to pay out liability claims.

The reason that vaccines are mandated is very simple, herd immunity. Herd immunity is what lets people that can't get the vaccines (like your friend who is allergic) live their life without serious fear of catching these deadly diseases. Yes, vaccines carry some non-trivial amount of danger, but science has verified that the danger to the individual is outweighed by the danger of society losing herd immunity.

What people don't realize is that it only takes 10-15% of the population being unvaccinated to cause a major outbreak. Once that happens, it is much more likely for a disease to mutate and be able to attack even those that are vaccinated. That's why the government mandates vaccines, and since the government is mandating vaccines. It makes sense for the government to pay out when vaccines hurt people when the government is the one that made the decision, not the manufacturers.

This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us.

Agreed. We're much better off listening to Jenny freakin' McCarthy.

What happens if and when 20 years from now there is serious evidence of a link between autism and some vaccines.

"Smallpox was the first disease [wikipedia.org] people tried to prevent by purposely inoculating themselves with other types of infections; smallpox inoculation was started in China or India before 200 BC." Furthermore [wikipedia.org], in the UK "[v]accination was first made compulsory in 1853, and the provisions were made more stringent in 1867, 1871, and 1874."

We started the scientific experiment over 2,000 years ago and the social experiment over 150 years ago. I think we've got a pretty good handle on the statistics by now.

This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us.

But you do this every day. The specifications for fuel containers, electricity transmission, microwave usage, drugs, food, drink as all brought about from open public discussion around a set of targeted studies. There are thousands of risks you take every day based on the statements of experts that set the margin for error as low as society wants, including the squabbling over the last few percentage points.

If there's a link between vaccines and autism 20 years from now, then *society itself* will have learned something. You may be horrified, but this occurs every day, and plenty of children & adults "pay" for these mistakes. Lead paint, drugs come and go, gaseous output from industry, heavy metals in manufacturing, etc. Lots of exposure to the "safe" chemicals we make and use every day will undoubtedly have new effects learned about them in the future, and some will be negative.

You are not living in the future, nor is society omnipotent. You can do your best to push the discoveries along as fast as possible, but you're going to have to accept your place in history, as we all. For example: you skipped the century of common transmission of animal-borne diseases in congested cities, but are now living in the century of plastic, fossil fuels and biological experimentation. There may never be a time when your actions don't involve some calculated risk, where you didn't do the calculations yourself.

Right now, there is no observable link between vaccines and autism, and there may never be. Fund more studies if you want, but don't skip the vaccines, you're just butting heads with society in general.

Mr Wakefield received funding to see if there was any evidence to support possible legal action by a group of parents who claimed their children were damaged by the vaccine. Some children were involved in both studies.

If that wasn't bad enough, alongside with other charges (see
here [bbc.co.uk]), there are signs of him fixing the data [timesonline.co.uk] in the study. Not exactly what I'd call a pillar of ethical and unbiased behavior...

My neighbor believed this, her husband was dumbfounded, but he and the doctor couldn't convince her otherwise. I had never even heard of it before I had talked to her husband. Kind of sad.

Well neither the husband nor the doctor played much of a role in the child's prenatal development, did they? Put yourself in Mom's position - she has to endure the feelings of guilt and inadequacy, not the sperm donor. As such she will naturally grasp any other explanation for the disorder, be it vaccines, overhead power lines, fluoride in the water, bug spray on her food, etc.

It's the same reason we have these absurdly nebulous diagnoses such as Autism in the first place. We've even got "mild autism" if you can't handle the full euphemism. Maybe it was a meaningful diagnosis when it had a much narrower definition, but now it's used as an umbrella for everything from practically braindead to a little slow to even just "doesn't talk much". It's become like ADD or the "learning disability" they'd have if they were a little older.

I have empathy for these families, but I don't think we're doing them any favors by constantly seeking different labels for everything, or using pseudoscience and finger-pointing to find a scapegoat for poor health, genetics, or luck.

Uhm...water is a chemical... h2o (lower-case so o is not mistaken for zero).

The parents concern is stirred with the timing..autism and vaccinations happen around the same time, so they are using the logical fallacy "Post hoc ergo propert hoc". They are confused, frustrated and don't know any better - and there is always a lawyer or extremist looking to use that to their advantage.

Another thing that gives them a basis is that chemicals are injected into their kids at the same time, and they believe there is a bad interaction...then throw in the word "mercury" - known for poisoning people and it is not hard to understand why people, who are confused, frustrated and don't know any better are pointing fingers at vaccinations.

Given that - we need to slap around the idiots who like to argue in the face of evidence instead of hiring scientists to research and prove their claims.

Watch out -- that's the cancer cluster myth. In any population, random events will not be uniformly distributed throughout the population, but will sometimes cluster. People in the cluster then look for a reason behind the cluster instead of recognizing it for what it is -- a product of randomness.

In answer to the first question, the special masters (3 of them in 3 different cases) said that the current scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism.

In the original study that showed some sort of a link, it was later discovered that 7 out of the 8 affected kids showed indications of autism before getting the vacccines.

Herd immunity [wikipedia.org], if you get enough people vaccinated, even those few without protection, are protected and you can basically force a disease into non-existence, if on the other side you don't get enough people vaccinated herd immunity no longer works and people will die as a result of that.

Its also questionable if freedom should allow you to let your child suffer and possibly die if a cure exists.

I tend to lean to the left side of the political spectrum, but two threads of liberal thought piss me off more than just about anything: anti nuke environmentalists and autism/vaccine linkers.

What on earth makes you think this has anything at all to do with "liberal thought"? Surely it's a completely apolitical issue??

You must be living in a serious bubble if you think that only liberals think you shouldn't "mess with nature." In fact, I nominate your post as the most dumbfounding I've seen on/. this week! And you've got 5 points!!